Colomb, Temporary Use PDF

PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER: TEMPORARY
USES OF SPACE, CITY MARKETING, AND THE

CREATIVE CITY DISCOURSE IN 2000s BERLIN
CLAIRE COLOMB
University College London
ABSTRACT: In spite of the amount of urban development that followed the Fall of the Wall, Berlin’s
urban landscape has remained filled with a large amount of “voids” and disused sites, which have
gradually been occupied by various individuals, groups, or entrepreneurs for “temporary” or
“interim” uses (such as urban beach bars). This paper analyzes how, and why, such temporary uses
of space have been harnessed in recent economic and urban development policies and in the official
city marketing discourse in Berlin post-2000, in the context of the discursive and policy shift toward
the promotion of Berlin as a “creative city.” The gradual process of enlistment of new forms of
cultural and social expression by policy-makers and real estate developers for urban development
and place marketing purposes has put pressure on the very existence and experimental nature of
“temporary uses” and “interim spaces.” These have consequently been going through various
trajectories of displacement, transformation, commodification, resistance, or disappearance, and in
particular cases have become the focus of intense local conflicts.
Temporary uses are generally not considered to be part of normal cycles of urban development.
If a building or area becomes vacant, it is expected to be re-planned, built over and used as
soon as possible. Temporary uses are often associated with crisis, a lack of vision and chaos.
But, despite all preconceptions, examples like the vital scene of Berlin’s nomadic clubs or
temporary events proves that temporary uses can become an extremely successful, inclusive
and innovative part of contemporary urban culture. (SUC, 2003, p. 4)
A fter the Fall of the Wall and the reunification of the city in 1989, a period of intensive urban
development began in Berlin. Throughout the 1990s large-scale construction sites punctuated
the urban landscape of the inner city, in particular around Potsdamer Platz, near the new seat
of the Federal Government near the river Spree and in the historical core of the Friedrichstadt.
The transformation of the city was promoted to an internal and external audience of Berliners,
visitors, and potential investors through high-profile city marketing events and image campaigns,
which featured the iconic architecture of flagship urban redevelopment projects to symbolize
Direct correspondence to: Claire Colomb, Senior Lecturer in Urban Sociology & European Spatial Planning, The Bartlett
School of Planning, University College London (UCL), Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB, UK. E-mail:
c.colomb@ucl.ac.uk.
JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 34, Number 2, pages 131–152.

Copyright C 2012 Urban Affairs Association
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ISSN: 0735-2166. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9906.2012.00607.x
132 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 34/No. 2/2012
the “new Berlin” of the postunification era (Colomb, 2011). Yet by the mid 2000s the “new
Berlin” marketed by urban boosters was no longer, in the eyes of many, so new and exciting.
After a short-lived period of economic and real-estate euphoria in the early 1990s, it became
apparent that Berlin would not become an economic powerhouse of global importance on a par
with London or New York. Because of the highly polycentric nature of the German territory and
urban system, the decision made in 1991 by the German Parliament to relocate the seat of the
Federal government to Berlin was not followed by a large-scale wave of company relocations to
the nation’s largest city. The city’s economic growth rate has, since the mid-1990s, remained low
and unemployment has been significantly higher than in other German Länder. The government
of the Land of Berlin—a city-state in the German federal system—nearly faced bankruptcy in
2001 and had to make severe cuts in public expenditure to tackle its large debt, which amounted
to approximately 60 billion euro in 2010.
One of the consequences of Berlin’s historical legacy and low levels of growth is that many
empty sites and wastelands still punctuate the city’s landscape, not only on the urban fringe
but also in central areas. These vacant sites are not dead spaces, however. Many have been
used on a temporary basis by a variety of actors and transformed into beach bars, open air
theaters, community gardens, sculpture parks, or alternative living projects. For several years
these sites—and their temporary use—were neglected by local policy-makers and left out of the
official promotional discourse of urban elites: they were perceived as irrelevant, marginal, or not
economically useful in the dominant language of place marketing and interurban competition.
From the early 2000s onward, however, the creative, unplanned, multifaceted, and dynamic
diversity of such “temporary uses of space” was gradually harnessed into urban development
policies and city marketing campaigns. New images and narratives began to be integrated into
Berlin’s official promotional discourse—including sites, places, activities, and people which had
been left out of the promotional imagery of the 1990s.
This article analyzes how and why former wastelands that have been occupied by various
individuals, groups, or entrepreneurs for “temporary” or “interim” uses have been harnessed in
recent economic and urban development policies and in the official city marketing discourse
in Berlin post-2000. It then discusses the implications of this process for such spaces. The
vast quantity of disused spaces available in Berlin—the capital city of one of Europe’s largest
nations—and the relative freedom and tolerance under which “temporary uses” were allowed to
flourish on such spaces, are rather unusual in comparison with the situation in other European
capital cities or large metropolises. Some scholars have indeed argued that contemporary Berlin
is an atypical case study in urban research because of its peculiar history as a divided city in a
divided country and of the legacy of past authoritarian regimes on its urban form.1 Yet in spite of
its historical specificities, post-Wall Berlin illustrates several (partly interrelated) processes that
are not unique to the city: the transition to a united city after a history of conflict and division;
the transition to a capital city in a nation redefining its national identity; the transition from a
socialist to a capitalist city; and the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial or post-Fordist
metropolis (Strom, 2001). The intensity of the urban restructuring processes that unfolded over a
short period of time post-1989 has acted as a “magnifier” that makes the city a particularly salient
case for making a contribution to theoretical debates on the relationship between “symbolic” and
“material” politics in contemporary urban governance (Colomb, 2011).
Following a brief presentation of the temporary uses of space that have grown on Berlin’s vacant
sites, the second section of the paper analyzes the mobilization and trajectory of such uses within
the context of the discursive and policy shift toward the marketing and promotion of Berlin as a
“creative city.” The paper thus contributes to the current debates, in critical urban research, about
the implications of the policy shift toward the promotion of the “creative city” in many places
across the globe. The proliferation of temporary uses of urban space in Berlin is a good example
I Temporary Uses of Space in Berlin I 133
showing that cultural innovation is often a phenomenon of cities “in crisis,” that is, suffering
from deindustrialization, low growth, or shrinkage (Bader & Scharenberg, 2010), something that
has been overlooked in the theses of Richard Florida adopted by urban policy-makers around the
world.
In spite of the specific characteristics and particular intensity of the phenomenon of temporary
uses of space in post-Wall Berlin, what is not unique to the city is the gradual process of enlistment
of new forms of cultural and social expression by local policy-makers and real-estate investors in
the name of the “creative city” agenda (Peck, 2005). This process is inherently contradictory and
conflictual, because it changes the way such spaces work and often threatens their very existence
by raising investors’ interest in previously neglected areas. This contradiction, discussed in the
third section of the paper, generates resistance on the part of the producers and users of temporary
spaces threatened with displacement, and leads to localized conflicts around the spaces earmarked
as “creative” in public policies and the official marketing discourse.
THE “VOIDS OF BERLIN”: WASTELANDS AND “URBAN PIONEERS” IN THE

1990s AND 2000s
In spite of the large amount of urban redevelopment that took place post-1989, Berlin is a
city which remains full of “voids” (Huyssen, 1997, 2003)—holes, wastelands, brownfield sites,
and vacant plots. There are a number of factors that explain land vacancy in cities around the
world: “weak demand in the local [real] estate market, delays in the political decision making
and planning processes, unclear ownership or exceptionally high construction costs caused by
soil contamination and massive old infrastructures” (Hentilä & Lindborg, 2003, p. 1). In Berlin,
some context-specific factors need to be taken into consideration: the former division of the city
by the Wall and its surrounding no man’s land, a zona non aedificandi (Figure 1); extensive
bomb damage during World War Two; the destruction of unwanted buildings and monuments
by successive political regimes; the abandonment of industrial and infrastructural sites caused
by the rapid deindustrialization that took place after the unification of Germany; and the slow
resolution of conflicts over the restitution of land and property in the 1990s. “Vacant spaces” are
also, in some cases, the deliberate product of particular urban planning models, for example, the
Modernist urban planning principles applied in parts of East- and West-Berlin between the 1950s
and 1970s that privileged large open spaces between buildings. All these specific factors explain
why Berlin has a significantly larger stock of empty, disused, or vacant sites than other European
national capitals or large cities, for example, London or Paris.
Following the reunification of the city, in the early 1990s many of the vacant plots located in
the central districts of Berlin became prime pieces of real estate in the context of the speculative
boom which hit Berlin in 1990–1991. Many sites in the Friedrichstadt were snapped up by
international investors; while one the most famous “wastelands” inherited from Berlin’s division,
the Potsdamer Platz, was sold in May 1990 by the Berlin Senate (city government) to the
Daimler-Benz corporation at a price below market value—a controversial sale later challenged
by the European Commission. This was a period of economic boom and inflated growth forecasts
for Berlin, which came to an end in 1993. Those brief years of building boom left an oversupply of
office space which has not been absorbed since. Lower than expected growth rates and investment
flows have limited the demand for commercial development on Berlin’s remaining vacant lots.
In conventional urban development processes, the time gap between the end of a previous land
use and the beginning of a new one is supposed to be kept as short as possible. But political,
environmental, and economic factors can stretch this interim period for a long time, when as in
Berlin, development does not occur for a variety of reasons.
FIGURE 1
Vacant Land in the Shadow of the Former Berlin Wall: Behind the East Side Gallery, Berlin-
Friedrichshain (Photo: Author, 2010)
Vacant plots of various sizes are consequently found all over Berlin. The inventory of green
and open spaces contained in the online environmental atlas produced by the Berlin Senate
Department for Urban Development (SenStadt, 2008) defines “vacant areas” as “areas currently
not used or cared for, on which variegated stands of vegetation can develop” (including sand
beaches, other nonvegetation-filled areas, a few artificial rain catchments, ditches, landfills, and
wet areas). In 2008, 14.4% of Berlin’s green and open spaces were classified as “vacant areas”
(i.e., 3.4% of the city’s total surface). A study commissioned by the Department for Urban
Development in the mid 2000s identified five types of vacant areas: abandoned industrial sites
(500 hectares), abandoned infrastructure sites such as harbors or railways (at least 100 hectares
without counting the former Tempelhof airport, itself 350 hectares), disused buildings in the
eastern part of the city (140 hectares),2 disused cemeteries (143 hectares), and roughly 1,000
small building plots totaling 170 hectares (SenStadt, 2007, pp. 28–30). Some of these sites have
been the object of specific plans for urban development, others not yet. Many empty sites are
owned by public institutions or semipublic agencies, in particular in the eastern part of the city.
The Liegenschaftsfonds, a private company owned by the Land of Berlin, was created in 2001
to market those publicly owned sites and properties. The small building plots (Baulücken) that
dot inner-city neighborhoods are often privately owned, and can be put for sale by their owners
on a Berlin-wide database of vacant plots available for development. As of October 2010, the
database listed 550 plots amounting to 110 hectares of buildable land (SenStadt, 2010).
For many politicians, public officials, planners, and city marketers, the vast quantity of “urban
voids” which remain in reunified Berlin is considered to be a negative feature of the cityscape.
Urban voids, for them, represent the ruins and ghosts of burdened, unwanted pasts, or the failure
of the contemporary urban economy in bringing expected amounts of investment and growth.
They are “wastelands,” literally: sites that are “wasted” as long as no investment or profitable use
can be found for them, “urban sites that appear to be unmarketable in the medium to long term,”
as phrased by the Department for Urban Development (SenStadt, 2007, p. 22). Doron (2000)
highlighted how planners and urban policymakers discursively construe such urban spaces as
“dead,” “void,” or “wasted.” In Berlin, moreover, the depiction of such spaces in the discourse
of politicians and policy documents has often been marked by a rhetoric of “reurbanization” and
“densification”3 (Hain, 2001; Ladd, 2000), which stresses the need to fill those “urban voids.” In
the absence of investment, such spaces are often visually hidden from the public eye by large-scale
canvasses fencing empty plots or by billboards advertising future development, and are left out
of the promotional imagery of place marketing brochures and campaigns.
Yet most of these “indeterminate spaces” (Groth & Corjin, 2005, p. 503) are not “dead”:
they are spaces of urban wildlife, spaces of “micro-political activity” (Cupers & Miessen, 2002,
p. 123), spaces of “alternative cultures” (Shaw, 2005), or “spaces of transgression” for marginal-
ized social groups, youth, or artists:
for some groups not incorporated as part of the contemporary “imageable city,” the urban
spaces popularly represented as dystopias may actually be practised as essential heavens,
transgressive lived spaces of escape, refuge, employment and entertainment. (MacLeod &
Ward, 2002, p. 164)
Berlin has indeed been a very fertile ground for all sorts of formal and informal activities
taking place on its interstitial, “in-between” spaces. This did not happen out of the blue: there
was an existing basis for such uses of space in Berlin. In the 1970s and 1980s the former West-
Berlin district of Kreuzberg had become a pocket of radical social movements (e.g., gay, student,
antimilitary, punk, and squatting movements), of countercultural initiatives materialized by squats
and alternative living projects. In the 1990s, the underground techno music scene was heavily
reliant on disused buildings and sites for its clubs and parties. As Shaw (2005) emphasized,
the existence and development of underground and alternative urban cultures, in Berlin and
elsewhere, has been indissociable from the availability of such vacant or abandoned spaces.
After the reunification, the city of Berlin “became the projection surface for a new wave of
uncontrolled urban practices and ideas (. . .) whose restless speed was barely slowed down by
formal control mechanisms” (Cupers & Miessen, 2002, p. 78): flea markets, car boot sales, beer
gardens, sports ground, waterfront beaches, community gardens, and techno clubs. The German
word “Zwischennutzung” (“interim” or “temporary” use) was coined to refer to such activities.
Temporary uses can be defined as uses that are “planned from the outset to be impermanent” and
“seek to derive unique qualities from the idea of temporality” (Haydn & Temel, 2006, p. 17). Till
(2011) suggests the term “interim spaces” to refer to the spaces used “temporarily” in a variety of
ways, in order to move away from a focus on temporary land uses per se and instead grasp “the
dynamic and open-ended sense of in-betweenness, interventions, and unexpected possibilities”
present in such activities and spaces. “Interim suggests a fluidity of temporality, rather than an
understanding of time measured and designated as insignificant or as located between the ‘real’
times of before development and after development” (p. 106). In the remainder of this paper we
will therefore use her terminology when referring to the spaces used on a temporary or interim
basis, whilst using the terms “temporary uses” or “users” to refer to the activities themselves and
their initiators.
In Berlin, research conducted in 2004–2005 found almost a hundred temporary uses on vacant
urban sites (SenStadt, 2007), covering a very diverse set of activities which include artistic, cul-
tural, leisure, trade, entertainment, social, sports, or gardening initiatives (tx-büro, 2005; SenStadt,
FIGURE 2
A Beach Bar on the Northern Bank of the River Spree, Berlin-Friedrichshain (Photo: Author,
2009)
2007). Some of the activities are run commercially (as part of the formal or the shadow economy),
some are not-for-profit or outside circuits of monetary exchange. The diversity of temporary uses
reflects the very heterogeneous nature of their initiators, who may be artists, private entrepreneurs,
“culturepreneurs” (Lange, 2007a), community groups, voluntary workers, or political activists in
search of spaces of autonomy. The first large-scale European research project that analyzed such
temporary uses4 identified five different types of temporary users (SUC, 2003, p. 10): start-ups
(new businesses, inventors, or patent holders whose aim is a full integration into the mainstream
urban economy); migrants (persons who are temporarily not integrated in stable social networks
or employment structures); system refugees (individuals or groups who make a deliberate, i.e.,
ideologically motivated choice to “withdraw” into an alternative universe); drop-outs (e.g., home-
less people, illegal immigrants, etc.); and part-time activists (those having a regular position and
income in society, but wanting to enrich their lives with experiences outside the established order).
It is interesting to note that most of these actors come from “outside the official, institutionalized
domain of urban planning and urban politics” (Groth & Corjin, 2005, p. 506).
Many temporary uses have a ludic, leisure-oriented focus: the first beach bar in Berlin, Strand-
bar Mitte, which opened in 2002, was soon followed by many others and in 2010 there were over
60 such urban beaches in Berlin. These beach bars or clubs were created by installing sand, deck
chairs, outdoor furniture, and exotic decoration in disused sites usually located on the waterfront
of Berlin’s canals or main river (Stevens & Ambler, 2010) (Figure 2). By contrast, other temporary
uses are the product of a search for spaces of cultural–artistic experimentation, as exemplified
by the Skulturenpark collaborative art project set up by a collective of young artist–activists who
have, since 2006, designed participatory art projects on an empty wasteland in the district of
Mitte (see Till, 2011 for a detailed analysis). In some (rarer) cases, temporary uses have created
spaces of “insurgent urbanism” (Sandercock, 1998, p. 120) and social innovation.5 This is the
case for projects inherited from the politicized movements of the 1980s (such as the trailer site
FIGURE 3
Schwarzer Kanal , an Alternative “Queer” Living Project and Trailer Site on the Southern Bank
of the Spree River, Berlin-Kreuzberg (Photo: Florian Kettner, 2009)
and “queer community living project” Schwarzer Kanal) (Figure 3), or more recently for projects
aiming at the integration of marginalized populations in the production of urban open space (e.g.,
the intercultural garden of Köpenick).6
Very often the appropriation of disused urban spaces is done in a bottom-up, grass-root manner,
with little financial investment, minimal interventions, and a high degree of recycling of existing
structures—that is, a form of “urbanism light” (SUC, 2003). Obtaining the permission to use
vacant space involves negotiations between interested users and an owner who is often seeking
to improve value or reduce maintenance costs (SenStadt, 2007, p. 22). Whether temporary uses
are made possible, accepted, or repressed depends on the attitude of land owners—which may
range from sympathetic support to outright opposition as owners fear that “unwanted temporary
users [will] block redevelopment and frighten away more profitable users” (SenStadt, 2007,
p. 46). Some users manage to secure the use of the site for free; others for a moderate rent or
service charge. Some sites are used all year round, others, such as the beach bars, only in summer.
Finally, one additional characteristic of interim spaces in Berlin is the active participation of the
visitors or consumers of the site in the production of a sense of place—the “continual, performative
co-production of place by managers and users” (Stevens & Ambler, 2010, p. 517).
A young generation of architects and urban theorists has begun to research the rapid de-
velopment of such practices of temporary uses in Berlin (and elsewhere) to make sense of
their implication for urbanism and urban development processes in contemporary cities. Some
authors have emphasized the challenges that they pose for “conventional” forms of urban planning
(Oswalt, 2000; SenStadt, 2007) as well as the lessons they offer for new forms of flexible, “open
source” urbanism (Misselwitz, Oswalt, & Overmeyer, 2007). Practices of temporary uses have
been interpreted as “post-Fordist place making” (Stevens & Ambler, 2010, p. 532), that is, a flexi-
ble mode of production of urban open spaces (or “loose spaces”) which differs from conventional
state- or market-led development processes (Franck & Stevens, 2007; Groth & Corjin, 2005;
Stevens & Ambler, 2010). Such practices “might change how planners, designers and managers
think about the production of urban open space” in an era when “major flows of urban develop-
ment finance are lacking” (Stevens & Ambler, 2010, p. 516). Many authors have integrated their
analysis of temporary uses within a wider reflection on the evolution of land uses in shrinking
cities and regions, and the challenges which depopulation and building vacancy generate for
planners (Oswalt & Kulturstiftung des Bundes, 2005, 2006; Oswalt & Rieniets, 2006).
In the Berlin context, however, scholars seem to have paid less attention so far to the explicit
mobilization and integration of temporary uses and interim spaces into urban policies and the
official place marketing discourse—a development that has been witnessed since the early 2000s,
as public officials and investors began to react to the increasing popularity of interim spaces. This
recent development raises important questions for critical urban research: what consequences
does the “instrumentalization” of temporary uses for policy purposes have for temporary uses
and users? Are temporary users “to remain nothing more than gap-fillers until market demand
permits a return to regulated urban planning” (Misselwitz et al., 2007, p. 104)? Interim spaces
are characterized by a tension between their actual use value (as publicly accessible spaces for
social, artistic, and cultural experimentation) and their potential commercial value. It is therefore
fundamental to analyze the trajectory of these temporary uses and interim spaces within the
broader political economy of urban transformation, economic restructuring, and changing urban
governance in Berlin.
PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER IN THE “CREATIVE CITY”: THE MOBILIZATION

OF TEMPORARY USES IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT POLICIES AND PLACE
MARKETING
By the turn of the 2000s, the phenomenon of the temporary use of vacant buildings and spaces
in Berlin had captured the attention of local politicians, planners, economic development officials,
and city marketers. The Berlin Senate and other local agencies began to integrate such uses into
existing strategies and to set up new policies and actions to support their further development.
This has to be read within the context of two related trends addressed in turn in this section:
(1) A shift in local economic development policies in Berlin toward the explicit promotion
of the cultural industries and the concept of the “creative city,” with the development of
associated policy initiatives to encourage “creative spaces,” of which former “urban voids”
are a key component;
(2) The transformation of the place marketing discourse produced by Berlin’s city and tourism
marketing agencies, which involved the gradual integration of previously nonrepresented
spaces and people into official marketing and media imagery (Colomb, 2011) to renew the
image of Berlin in the new millennium.
In this context, temporary uses and interim spaces have been marketed for several reasons: as
playgrounds or workspaces for “creative” entrepreneurs, as milieux that can attract other creative
workers and consumers, as a location factor for firms directly or peripherally related to the creative
economy, or as tourist attractions.
Berlin and the Creative City Mantra: “Planning for Creative Spaces” or Running
after Self-Generated Cultural Dynamics?
In 2001, a new coalition between the Social Democratic Party and the left-wing party PDS
(Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, now called Die Linke) came to power in Berlin and
ruled the city for a decade. The new coalition inherited a totally bankrupt city and had little room
for maneuver. In comparison to other German cities, Berlin’s growth rates have remained low and
unemployment high. One of the few sectors which has, however, been doing well in Berlin is that
of the cultural industries—the fastest growing sector in the city’s economy. In 2002 this sector
represented 18,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, 8% of the Berlin workforce and 11% of
Berlin’s GDP (SenWAF, 2005). By 2006, the sector accounted for 10% of the workforce and 21%
of the GDP (SenWTF, 2008).7 Several factors have explained the successful growth of cultural
industries in Berlin, in particular cheap living and working spaces, a pre-existing concentration
of artistic, alternative, and counter-cultural networks, and a vibrant music and art scene attracting
young cultural producers from other parts of the world.
It therefore does not come as a surprise that in the early 2000s, the Department of the Economy
of the Berlin Senate began to integrate the theme of the “creative city” in its policies and strategies.
The analysis and policy recommendations made by Richard Florida (2002), controversial and
criticized as they may be in academic circles (Krätke, 2010; Markusen, 2006; Montgomery,
2005; Peck, 2005), have been extremely influential on local policy-makers around the world,
and German cities are no exception (Berlin-Institut für Bevölkerung und Entwicklung, 2007).
The Berlin government’s approach to the growth of cultural industries was initially reactive, but
it later turned to more proactive policies (SenWAF, 2005; SenWTF, 2008). Cultural industries
have been targeted both as an economic sector in its own right, and as an important location
factor for the attraction of other industries and for the continuous expansion of urban tourism
(a very dynamic sector of the Berlin economy). Strategies to encourage cultural clustering and
entrepreneurship became key areas for public intervention, through support to affordable work
spaces, start-up centers, or Internet-based platforms aimed at facilitating network formation in
the music and design sector. Such policy efforts earned the city the UNESCO designation as
“City of Design” as part of the “Creative Cities Network” in November 2005.
In 2007, the Senate Department of Urban Development commissioned a study to investigate
how urban development and planning policies could encourage the further growth of cultural
industries (Ebert & Kunzmann, 2007; STADTart, Kunzmann, & Culture Concepts, 2007), as
part of a deliberate attempt to transform disused urban areas into new creative clusters. Policy-
makers started to realize that one of the city’s characteristics—the presence of many unused sites
and buildings, which was previously perceived as a sign of market weakness in the dominant
capitalist urban development rationale—could be promoted as a strength to attract more “young
creatives” (many of whom did not wait for official promotion policies to settle in Berlin in the
first place). The first report on the cultural economy (SenWAF, 2005) had already mentioned
the availability of vacant spaces for temporary uses as key for the continuous development of
the cultural economy. In April 2005 one session of the Stadtforum, a consultative body advising
Berlin’s decision-makers on urban planning and development issues, was dedicated to exploring
the potential of temporary uses for the city. In 2006, the Department of Urban Development
commissioned a detailed study of temporary uses in Berlin (Stadt Land Fluss, 2006) and on that
basis developed various policy measures to facilitate such uses for leisure, sport, entertainment,
cultural, ecological, and social purposes (SenStadt, 2007).
In an era of financial restrictions in which public authorities have a limited direct investment
capacity, the ways in which the local state has promoted temporary uses of space involve medi-
ation, assistance in locating sites or the relaxation of licensing and planning procedures (SUC,
FIGURE 4
Berlin’s Largest Vacant Site. Temporary Uses of Space at the Former Tempelhof Airport (Now
a Public Park) (Photo: Author, 2011)
2003, p. 23). In 2003 the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf pioneered the concept of a coordination
unit whose task is to match site owners with potential temporary users, as well as launch calls for
“temporary use ideas.” The concept was replicated elsewhere in the city: public subsidies were
granted to small organizations which act as brokers between land owners and potential temporary
users in search of a space for their “creative ideas.” The Zwischennutzungsagentur, for example,
received funding from the Federal urban policy program Soziale Stadt to encourage the uptake of
empty retail spaces in deprived neighborhoods. The formal remit of the Liegenschaftsfonds, the
state-owned company in charge of marketing and selling public property, was modified to allow
temporary use contracts for nonprofit, community-oriented activities on the publicly owned sites
that are held in its database, in the absence of interest by potential buyers (Land Berlin, 2005).
Additionally, the local state recognized that normal planning and land development procedures
are not well suited for temporary use projects (Kohoutek & Kamleithner, 2003), which “are
assessed according to standard criteria as stipulated by building and planning regulations and
the Federal State building order” (Stevens & Voigt, 2007, p. 118). In 2005, a reform of Berlin’s
building code simplified the licensing system necessary for temporary uses (SenStadt, 2007,
p. 164). More recently, the creative ideas and initiatives of temporary users have been explicitly
included by the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development in the redevelopment of large
(public) open spaces in Berlin, most notably in the planning of the public park now occupying
the site of the former Tempelhof airport (Figure 4) (SenStadt, 2011).
It is worth analyzing the rationale that underpins the Berlin Senate’s increasing support for
temporary uses of vacant urban spaces. For the local state, there are three main reasons for
supporting such uses (SenStadt, 2007, pp. 22–23): the (free) maintenance of public property and
the avoidance of decay and vandalism; their contribution to economic development; and their
contribution to social objectives through the creation of new, publicly accessible open spaces at
little or no costs for the public purse (Figure 4). The economic development rationale, however,
has been predominant. There is an explicit linkage between the mobilization of temporary uses
and the creative city agenda of the city government:
The broad range of temporary use projects in Berlin has become a PR and economic factor
for the city. Whether as a motor for creating jobs, a catalyst for the relocation of international
companies or as an attraction for tourists, the financial stimulus generated by temporary users
is increasingly important for Berlin as a creative metropolis. (SenStadt, 2007, p. 41)
Temporary uses, nonetheless, are at the same time often (although not always) perceived by
public authorities as an intermediary, second-best option for vacant urban spaces in the absence
of other development options, or as a prelude to more profitable ventures to be launched by
the initial users themselves or by external investors. It is rather telling that the title of the
Senate-commissioned study on the potential of temporary uses for urban development in Berlin
is “urban pioneers” (Raumpioniere). The term was first used by architect Klaus Overmeyer
(2005) who made an analogy between temporary users and the military scouts who would go on
reconnaissance trips to chart unknown territories and prepare the ground for those who would
later settle there. The term was taken over in official publications and in the speeches of the Berlin
Senator for Urban Development to describe “a new species of urban players, for whom urban
spaces, untamed territory at best, is something to be discovered, squatted, conquered” (Misselwitz
et al., 2007, p. 104). Academic observers will undoubtedly note the striking (although unintended)
parallel with the notions of “pioneers” and “new urban frontier” used by Neil Smith (1996) in
relation to the shifting geographies of gentrification. The Berlin Senate has actually acknowledged
that temporary use projects “give a considerable boost to future developments” by “anchoring a
new image of a disused location in the public eye”—a change of image which is a prerequisite
for the change in a site’s purpose or function (SenStadt, 2007, p. 47).
There is indeed evidence in Berlin that in certain areas temporary users (such as techno clubs)
have acted as “truffle pigs” (Lange, 2007b, p. 136), turning sites such as the Spree river banks
into attractive locations for large media or music corporations (Bader & Scharenberg, 2010).
This is well-illustrated by the remark made by the CEO of Universal Music with regard to the
decision to locate the European headquarters of the company in the Media Spree area of Berlin:
“we built our palace in a swamp intentionally, and the swamp better not dry out!” (quoted by
Lange, 2007b, p. 139). The thriving club and music scene that developed in the area in the 1990s
and the presence of innovative subcultural enterprises (e.g., labels, DJs, designers)—some of
which are based on temporary uses of space (such as clubs)—was a central reason why some
global players (MTV and Universal) moved into the area in the first place (Bader, 2004; Bader
& Scharenberg, 2010). This process, from the point of view of small-scale cultural producers, is
a double-edged sword: whilst it offers more opportunities for funding, audiences, and contracts
through the flexible integration of small businesses into the networks of global players, it also has
a number of perverse effects: pressures for commercialization, increasing “hype” surrounding the
area leading to higher visitor numbers (not always wanted), rapidly escalating rents, and pressures
for redevelopment by real-estate developers who bought large parts of the site.
Pushing the Visual Urban Frontier: The Transformation of Place Marketing

Imagery in Berlin Post-2000
From the early 1990s onward, a number of public and private actors have joined forces to
develop elaborate activities and strategies of place marketing to “sell” the new Berlin to a varied
audience, in particular the city marketing company Partner für Berlin, the tourism promotion
agency Berlin Tourismus Marketing, the Senate Department of the Economy, the Mayor’s office,
the chamber of commerce and industry and the local media (Colomb, 2011). Place marketing
refers to the intentional and organized process of construction and dissemination of a discourse
on, and images of, a city, in order to attract tourists and investors or generate the support of local
residents for a particular urban vision. The process is “spatial” in the sense that it:
seeks to mediate or construct a defined identity for a particular geographical space, and usually
makes use of spatial metaphors and of specific architectural symbols characterizing that place in
the process. Place marketing activities thus interact with place making activities (architecture,
planning, urban design and urban development) and with the cultural politics of collective
identity and memory construction through space. (Colomb, 2011, p. 26)
Until the year 2000, the visual imagery of the promotional campaigns designed by the city
marketing organization Partner für Berlin predominantly displayed three sites as symbols of the
“new Berlin”: the Potsdamer Platz and its high-rise, iconic corporate architecture symbolizing
the (invoked rather than actual) status as global capitalist service metropolis; the new government
quarter and the Reichstag (seat of the federal parliament) as symbol of the new “Berliner Repub-
lik”; finally the “Neue Mitte” (i.e., the Friedrichstadt area) and its reconstructed urban fabric as
symbol of a retrieved traditional European urbanity (Colomb, 2011).
By the late 1990s, the ambitious vision of Berlin as global metropolis in the making that
had been embraced by the city’s economic and political elites a decade earlier had faded away.
Paradoxically the need for intensive image production became even stronger as a result: the
mismatch between the marketing discourse produced in the 1990s and the reality of the economic
trajectory of the city explained the search for new image campaigns, new slogans, a new “Berlin
brand,” at the turn of the 21st century (Colomb, 2011). In the search for new images that can
distinguish a city from its competitors, the “imagineering process” (Rutheiser, 1996) needs to be
constantly taken forward by place marketing professionals through new visual “urban frontiers.”
A new storyline consequently came to the forefront in Berlin city marketing: that of the creative
city, which appeared for the first time in a series of advertisements in 2000, “the New Berlin – the
Five Strengths.” From then on, the city marketing organization Partner für Berlin and the Senate
Department of the Economy intensified their activities to attract more firms from various sectors
of the cultural industries. A 2001 advertisement specifically invited “creative entrepreneurs” to
come and start up a firm in Berlin, mentioning the city’s nightlife and cultural scenes as key
attraction factors. A year later, another advertisement, picturing the young female CEO of MTV
Central Europe, highlighted the constant change, experimentation, trend setting, and creativity of
Berlin as significant location factors.
Because all cities are now involved in the global competition for “creative” industries, “some
way has to be found to keep some commodities or places unique and particular enough” “to
maintain a monopolistic edge in an otherwise commodified and often fiercely competitive econ-
omy” (Harvey, 2001, pp. 396–397). The implication of this is that urban policy-makers around
the world are now explicitly targeting the “off-beat,” “alternative,” and previously “underground”
subcultural and artistic sectors in their local economic development and place marketing strate-
gies and urban policies. The “creative city” discourse consequently takes the processes of cultural
commodification and artistically inflected place promotion which have existed since the 1970s
one step further (Peck, 2005, p. 762).
But it is not only urban leaders who want their city to “distinguish itself” in marketing
campaigns. The transformation of the cultural consumption practices of (part of) the middle class
has been characterized by a mainstreaming of what were previously considered as “underground”
or subcultures. The consumption practices of, in particular, professionals involved in cultural and
knowledge-based industries, are marked by a constant search for “distinction” from the traditional
bourgeoisie (to use Bourdieu’s concept, 1979). The possession of “subcultural capital” signalizes
status in the form of “hipness” (Thornton, 1997). This has triggered a constant renegotiation
and extension of the boundaries of legitimate culture to include new, previously illegitimate art
and cultural forms (like street art and graffiti). In this context subcultures “can no longer be
understood primarily as a cultural attack against the mainstream” or as resistance to a hegemonic
culture, but have become “niche markets” (Bader & Scharenberg, 2010, p. 79), because “creatives
want edgy cities, not edge cities” (Peck, 2005, p. 745). Urban policy-makers and city marketing
organizations have begun to capitalize on this by marketing their alternative scenes, for example
in Amsterdam, Melbourne (Shaw, 2005) or Paris (Vivant, 2009). A combination of changing

cultural consumption practices and changing policy focus consequently explains why new sites
and spaces have become integrated into the formal representation of Berlin to the outside world,
accompanied by a narrative of “creativity,” diversity, tolerance, vibrancy, and “hipness.”
This process has been exemplified by the gradual integration of the hedonistic techno and club
culture, and the gay culture, into Berlin’s city marketing and tourism promotion campaigns. It
has also been accompanied by what I would call, borrowing Smith’s (1996) terminology, the
pushing of the visual and discursive “urban frontier” in the official representations of the city
for marketing and branding purposes, in order to accrue a distinct “collective symbolic capital”
(Harvey, 2001). New types of sites and spaces associated with urban subcultures were integrated
into the imagery of city marketing campaigns, the publications of city marketing organizations,
and the discourse of the national and international media on Berlin as “destination.” The sites
occupied by temporary uses alongside the river Spree, in particular, have become particularly
popular images, for example, the beach bars (Figure 2), clubs and Badeschiff (a boat turned into
an outdoor swimming pool). The “be Berlin” international marketing campaign launched by the
city marketing organization in 2009 (Colomb & Kalandides, 2010) featured entertainment-related
temporary uses quite prominently, advertising the “rough façades, cracks, contradictions,” and
“fractures” of the city as assets (Berlin Partner, 2009, p. 10). Berlin’s “urban voids,” previously
left out of the promotional imagery of the 1990s, are now presented as new urban playgrounds
for artistic production, consumption, creativity, entertainment, and leisure, and as “unique selling
points” for Berlin. International newspapers such as The Guardian, The Independent, and The New
York Times have featured articles on Berlin’s urban beaches and club culture as tourist attractions
worth a visit (Barkham, 2007; Bernstein, 2005; The Independent, 2008; Time Magazine, 2009;
Woodward, 2005), shifting their attention away from the iconic sites of the 1990s redevelopment
of Berlin such as Potsdamer Platz.8
It should be noted here, however, that only certain types of entertainment-related, “ludic”
temporary uses are portrayed to fit into the image of a young, vibrant creative city. The caravan sites
or alternative living projects that have squatted on vacant plots in Kreuzberg are, unsurprisingly,
not displayed, although some artistic squats (e.g., the Tacheles building in Mitte) have made their
way into the tourism promotion imagery. This is because, as explained above, temporary uses
and “urban pioneers” are valued as a “means to an end” rather than as alternatives to dominant
(capitalist) forms of urban development. The interim spaces deemed too radical and politicized,
that is, those associated with the radical Left and Autonomen movements, are perceived as too
subversive of the existing order or too threatening to the audiences which city boosters wish
to attract. The existence of such spaces actually was often repressed or suppressed by Berlin’s
“Red-Red” coalition government (e.g., the eviction of the squatted houses at Brunnenstrasse or
Liebig 14) (Holm & Kuhn, 2011).
There is thus a delicate balancing act on the part of urban policy-makers who seek to harness
alternative or countercultural movements in the city marketing discourse and urban development
strategies. To maintain place uniqueness and distinctiveness, the local state and private capital
have to support “a form of differentiation and allow divergent and to some degree uncontrollable
local cultural developments that can be antagonistic to its own smooth functioning” (Harvey, 2001,
p. 409). This means the local state “can even support (though cautiously and often nervously)
all manner of ‘transgressive’ cultural practices precisely because this is one way in which to
be original, creative and authentic as well as unique” (Harvey, 2002, np). This is inherently
conflictual because it produces, in turn, “widespread alienation and resentment among the cultural
producers who experience first-hand the appropriation and exploitation of their creativity for the
economic benefit of others” (Harvey, 2002, np). There is, therefore, a fundamental contradiction—
discussed in the next section—at the heart of the process of pushing the visual “urban frontier”
in place marketing and urban branding strategies: “a branding strategy using a city’s subculture
may enhance the city’s symbolic value, but simultaneously undermine the everyday conditions
necessary to sustain the creative process itself” (Bader & Scharenberg, 2010, p. 80). This paradox
is inherent to the process of mobilizing culture, heritage, and history in the search for “monopoly
rents” which characterizes capitalist urban development (Harvey, 1989, 2001).
TEMPORARY USERS OF URBAN SPACE IN THE AGE OF THE “CREATIVE CITY”:

DILEMMAS, TENSIONS, AND CONFLICTS
The new generation of “creative city policies” of the 2000s in Berlin has accelerated the process
of harnessing cultural, artistic, and alternative uses of urban spaces for economic purposes. As
discussed above, in this logic, artists, cultural producers, and temporary users are not only targeted
as an economic sector in themselves (e.g., the cultural industries), but also as the main component
of the “soft infrastructure,” the unique “look and feel,” diversity and “hipness” which provide
specific cities with a competitive advantage to attract workers in the knowledge-based industries.
The instrumentalization of temporary uses and of interim spaces poses a major challenge for
their creators and users, who are faced with major tensions between “authenticity” and “staging,”
between the pursuit of truly alternative or noncommercial endeavors and their appropriation by the
market for a (longer-term) project of commercial urban redevelopment, between the spontaneous
use of urban margins and the incremental start of a process of symbolic, and real, gentrification
(Shaw, 2005).
The role of artists and cultural producers in processes of gentrification has been explored in
depth in the academic literature since Zukin’s (1988, 1995) and Harvey’s (1989) seminal studies
of the use of “culture” and the arts as instruments of urban revitalization in New York and
Baltimore. The process of physical gentrification (i.e., an upgrade of the building stock followed
by changes in tenure patterns, increases in rent and the gradual displacement of existing residents
by higher income groups) often starts with “symbolic gentrification” (Holm, 2010; Lang, 1998).
Temporary uses “substantially contribute [to] the symbolic and programmatic redefinition of
sites, mostly from former industrial or infrastructural use to post-industrial types of programs
(culture, services, leisure)” (SUC, 2003, p. 24), something that generates the precondition for
commercial redevelopment to take place on or around temporarily used sites. In Berlin, “symbolic
gentrification” has been further triggered by the marketing of temporary uses by the local state,
the media, and temporary users themselves;9 by the inclusion of new, “off-beat” areas into tourist
guides and by the relentless search for new “up and coming” areas in the local media (e.g., the
city magazines TIP and Zitty).
The temporary uses which have emerged since the 1990s on Berlin’s vacant spaces have
consequently followed various trajectories of survival, transformation, or disappearance over the
years. Some temporary users have been able to consolidate their presence by securing a long-term
agreement to remain on site (e.g., the beach bar Strandbar Mitte, which was incorporated in a
reduced and more controlled form into the long-term plans for the Montbijou park—see Stevens &
Ambler, 2010). The transformation into a permanent use is often accompanied by a transformation
of the activity into a proper business, turning the initial users from “space pioneer” to “spatial
enterprise” (SenStadt, 2007, p. 127). A good example of that process is the Arena complex on
the southern bank of the river Spree. A former omnibus depot built in 1927 was occupied in
1995 by a nonprofit artists’ collective which began to organize cultural events, while some of the
buildings and courtyards began to be used as a flea market. The building complex then became
a fully fledged, large-scale commercial entertainment venue, with a large hall hosting concerts,
cultural and corporate events attracting up to 7,500 people. A boat with an outdoor swimming
pool (in summer) and a sauna (in winter), the Badeschiff , was successfully added to the site. Part
of the original flea market has survived in some of the site’s warehouses—an example of informal
temporary uses continuing to exist after the establishment of a formal, permanent, and profitable
venture on the same site (SUC, 2003).
In many instances, however, a temporary use is threatened with displacement after a few
years, although the weak economic demand in Berlin has meant that the pressures on temporary
users have not been as high as in other large European cities. If temporary users “are forced to
abandon their current locations, there is still more vacant space, though this is more and more
on the outskirts” (Bader & Bialluch, 2008, p. 98). This has triggered various reactions on the
part of temporary users. Some have consented to move and concentrated their effort on finding
a suitable site to continue their activity, as did several beach bars and techno clubs in Berlin.
Other temporary users have fought to remain on the initial site by negotiating with land owners,
sometimes to reach a compromise combining a new, permanent use alongside the initial temporary
use.10 Other temporary users have continued to occupy the site without the owner’s permission
(i.e., squatting). Some have been displaced and have ceased their activity in the absence of a new
suitable site. Finally, some temporary users have mobilized the support of other actors to defend
the existence of temporary uses and interim spaces. Such uses and spaces, in that sense, present
a strong paradox for established city planning and urban politics:
Institutionalised stakeholders may occasionally appreciate their presence for their inherent
potential to enhance attractiveness of and revitalisation of certain parts of the city. On the
other hand, these sites and the actors involved also spatialise and visualise a resistance and
temporary alternative to the institutionalised domain and the dominant principles of urban
development. (Groth & Corjin, 2005, p. 503, my emphasis)
When temporary uses are repressed or threatened with displacement, forms of mobilization
between temporary users, the neighborhood, and sympathizers may therefore emerge to oppose
the official redevelopment plans for a site (Groth & Corjin, p. 521). Often these actors do not
only demand the preservation of the existing temporary uses, but also seek to have a voice in
the planning process for the future of the site. In Berlin the most prominent example of such a
mobilization is the conflict that has surrounded the redevelopment of the so-called “Mediaspree”
area which spans 3.7 km alongside the eastern part of the river Spree. From the mid 1990s
onward many temporary uses have been set up on various disused sites in the area, in particular
several beach bars and clubs. Some have become successful commercial enterprises (e.g., Bar
25, Oststrand) whilst others have maintained a more social-cultural outlook (Yaam) or a radical
political character (such as the caravan site and “rebel queer living project” Schwarzer Kanal).
In the 1990s the area did not attract much attention from local policymakers, as priority was
given to the rebuilding of central sites such as Potsdamer Platz and the new government quarter. In
2001 and 2004, two high-profile media and music corporations relocated to converted warehouse
buildings on the northern bank of the river: Universal Music Germany and MTV Central Europe.
From 2002 onward, a coalition of land owners, large corporations and the Berlin Senate began to
promote the redevelopment of the eastern Spree area into a large-scale office and entertainment
complex for the media and music industries under the label “Mediaspree.” This vision clashed in
scale and in content with the existing temporary uses and small-scale cultural enterprises present
in the area.
In 2008, a coalition of actors got together under the banner “Mediaspree Versenken!” (“Sink
Mediaspree”) to protest against the plans for the site, in particular the scale and nature of the
proposed developments and the foreseen privatization of access to the riverside (Figure 5). The
movement brought together a diverse set of actors—a rare case “where the alternative and radical
left successfully cooperated with subcultural actors (in particular from the club scene), creative
FIGURE 5
Protesting Against the Redevelopment Plans for the Mediaspree Area. Left: Graffiti on the
Quay of a Beach Bar with the 02 Arena in the Background. Right: Demonstration Against the
Mediaspree Development: The Banner is an Ironic Subversion of the Slogan of Berlin’s 2008 City
Marketing Campaign “be Berlin” (Photo: Left, Author, 2010; Right, Dominique Kreuzkam, 2009)
entrepreneurs, parts of the alternative middle class (often coming from previous movements) and
the marginalized” (Scharenberg & Bader, 2009, p. 332). The mobilization managed to force the
investors and the local state to reconsider some of their plans for the area, although the long-term
prospects are still unclear. The story of the struggle is well analyzed by Scharenberg and Bader
(2009) and will not be discussed further here. What is worth noting, in relation to the present
discussion, is that the initiators of many temporary uses—artists, cultural entrepreneurs, club
owners, or activists whom the Berlin Senate labels “young creatives” or “urban pioneers”—have
played a prominent role in the protests against the redevelopment plans for the area, fighting in
particular against the eviction of temporary users (Novy and Colomb, 2012). From 2008 onward,
the movement was renamed Megaspree and expanded its agenda and claims to address Berlin-
wide issues of increasing rents, the displacement of low income residents, gentrification and the
eviction of alternative, subcultural projects or “leftist free spaces” (Holm, 2010; Holm & Kuhn,
2011; Novy and Colomb, 2012; Scharenberg & Bader, 2009).
This development is not unique to Berlin. There is evidence of similar forms of mobilization
in other German cities, for example, in Hamburg (Novy and Colomb, 2012), where in October
2009 a collective of artists, musicians, and social activists published a manifesto attacking the
“branding” of Hamburg as “creative city,” the type of urban (re)development policies done in the
name of the “creative city” agenda, and the instrumentalization of artists and cultural producers
in the process (NiON, 2010; Oehmke, 2010). The displacement of artistic and cultural uses,
temporary or not, is one of the elements mentioned in the manifesto. In other cities across the
globe there is mounting evidence of a growing mobilization by members of the so-called “creative
class”—some of whom engaged in temporary uses of space—to defend the urban spaces, uses,
and users threatened by development policies done in the name of the “creative city” mantra.
CONCLUSION
This contribution has explored the gradual integration of temporary uses of space in Berlin’s
official place marketing discourse and in the economic development policies set up to promote
Berlin as “creative city” post-2000. The “creative city” agenda of the Berlin Senate is closely
associated with an urban development model which relies on a multiplicity of “creative spaces”
whose boundaries, location, and nature are constantly reinvented by young “urban pioneers”
(SenStadt, 2007). As noted by Peck in his analysis of “creative city strategies,” the creativity
of such strategies is precisely that they enlist “some of the few remaining pools of untapped
resources” and “previously-marginalized actors” (2005, p. 763)—in the Berlin case, temporary
uses and interim spaces. But the paradox here is that “reducing interim and small-scale users to
being solely a marketing tool for real estate in the city, combined with the lack of any strategy
for their support, undermines the development of a proper long-term creative city policy” (Bader
& Bialluch, 2008, pp. 98–99).
The production of new visual urban frontiers and new urban images in the branding of the
so-called “creative city,” and the material impacts which this process has in terms of displace-
ment, institutionalization, and commodification, generates resistance on the part of some of the
producers and users of interim spaces. This leads to localized conflicts about the future of spaces
promoted as “creative” in public policies and the official marketing discourse. On the one hand,
Berlin’s “urban margins” offer the possibility of an escape from “the controlled spaces of its
urbanistic interventions” and “the consumerist bombardment of meaning and messages” (Cupers
& Miessen, 2002, p. 83). As in-between spaces between architecturally planned sites they stand
“in the shadow of institutionalized meaning and representation” (p. 105) and thus offer spaces
for cultural, social, and artistic experimentation. On the other hand, such temporary practices
often pave the way for more conventional forms of urban redevelopment that threaten the sur-
vival of temporary, experimental uses, forcing them to transform, relocate, or disappear. The
local state has an instrumental view of temporary uses as uses that are permitted “by default”
in the absence of strong demand for commercial development. If a site becomes valuable for
mainstream forms of real-estate development, conflict arises between current and future users.
The Mediaspree area in Berlin is a case in point. Temporary uses are thus characterized by
inherent tensions between their temporary nature and the potential search for perennity, between
their grassroot, unplanned character, and their inevitable encounter with top-down planning and
urban development processes, between their search for alternative cultural forms of “insurgent
urbanism” and their inherent tendency to pave the way for profit-oriented urban redevelopment
processes.
This Berlin case study, in spite of the historic and contextual specificities of the city, is of
relevance for urban practice and research in other contexts, in particular in “shrinking cities”
and regions with large stocks of disused spaces, for example, in Central and Eastern Europe, the
Rust Belts of the United States, and North-West Europe, but also in Latin America (Pallagst,
Wiechmann, & Martinez-Fernandez, 2011). In the United States, cities like Cleveland or Detroit
have lost a significant proportion of their population and are left with a built footprint much
larger than their actual and future populations. Large urban areas are filled with vacant buildings
and disused sites. Various experiments in temporary uses and a national campaign (the National
Vacant Properties Campaign) have raised the interest of researchers, planners, politicians, and
activists in interim uses as possible solutions to deal with land and building vacancy in the United
States. Following the impact of the 2008 global financial and economic crisis on cities around the
world, it is interesting to note that at present not only “shrinking cities” are faced with the issue
of increasing vacancy. Cities which until recently were (or still are) growing have been affected
by the abrupt slowdown (or complete halt) of construction activity and by sharp cuts in public
investment in urban public spaces. Sites half-built up, where construction is unlikely to resume
in the near future, are a common sight in many countries such as Spain. Temporary or interim
uses are, therefore, worth exploring in those contexts too, albeit with an awareness of the inherent
dilemmas which characterize their development.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The author would like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a 6-month
Experienced Researcher Fellowship which funded part of the research upon which this paper is based. The
fellowship was held at the Centre for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, in the second half of 2009.
ENDNOTES
1 In the 1990s and 2000s, as Berlin became a popular case study in urban research, a debate unfolded between
a number of (mainly) Anglophone researchers about the appropriateness of using an “Anglo-American meta-
narrative of neo-liberal urban governance” for the analysis of Berlin’s post-1989 transformations (see Campbell,
1999; Cochrane, 2006; Häußermann, 1999; Latham, 2006a, 2006b; Marcuse, 1998). Some authors argued that
since the Fall of the Wall, the city has been going through a process of “urban Euroconvergence” (Campbell,
1999, p. 179) or “normalization” characterized by trends witnessed in other North American and European
metropolitan areas, such as gentrification or suburbanization (Brenner, 2002; Cochrane & Passmore, 2001).
Others (Latham, 2006a, 2006b) have argued that “many of the more interesting and exceptional phenomena
which are shaping Berlin” post-1989 are not grasped well by such analyses, which “fail to convey the distinc-
tiveness of many of the debates around urban development, regulation (of all sorts), and how these debates are
often structured through patterns of thinking which are quite alien to Anglo-American urban practice. And they
miss – or in fact simply discount—the quite different intellectual and political traditions through which Berlin
is shaped” (Latham, 2006a, p. 377).
2 Following German unification, the outer districts of East Berlin have experienced population decline — in the
district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, by 17% between 1995 and 2002, with rates nearing 30% in some parts of the
district (SenStadt, 2007, p. 23). A federal program of urban renewal named Stadtumbau Ost was set up in 2002
to tackle this decline. The program included the demolition of “surplus housing” and disused public buildings:
in 2007, 185 buildings covering a surface of 140 hectares were earmarked for demolition.
3 The discourse on “reurbanization” is part of a wider debate which was particularly intense in Berlin in the 1990s
on what type of urban form and architectural norms should be used to guide the reconstruction of the reunified
city. The promoters of “critical reconstruction” advocated a return to a “traditional” European city through
the restoration of the historical block patterns, street alignments, and building heights of the late 19th century
city, whilst prominent architects such as Rem Koolhaas or Daniel Liebeskind argued that this “neo-historicist
design regime” would stifle opportunities for architectural expression (see Burg, 1994; Burg & Stimmann,
1995; Molnar, 2010; Murray, 2008, for an overview of the debates).
4 The project Urban catalysts. Strategies for temporary uses—Potential for development of urban residual areas in
European metropolises (2001–2003) was funded by the European Union 5th Framework Program for Research
under the specific strand “City of Tomorrow – Cultural Heritage.” The project, which involved a network of 12
partners from five European metropolises—Helsinki, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, and Naples—investigated
the potential of temporary uses as a motor of urban change. Its findings are summarized in SUC (2003).
5 Social innovation refers here to forms of social mobilization focused on the “satisfaction of human needs (and
empowerment, i.e., social economy) through innovation in the relations within neighborhood and community
governance” (Moulaert, Martinelli, Gonzalez, & Swyngedouw, 2007, p. 196). Such forms of mobilization have
the capacity to “elaborate alternative (counterhegemonic) discourses and actions in terms of resistance and/or
creative alternatives” (p. 206).
6 There is no space here to analyze in detail the story and content of specific temporary uses and interim spaces
in Berlin. For case studies in English, see Groth and Corjin (2005), SenStadt (2007), Shaw (2005), Stevens and
Ambler (2010), and Till (2011).
7 The Berlin Senate’s definition of the cultural industries includes publishing and printed media, film and
TV production, fashion, design, software and games development, telecommunications, music, advertising,
architecture, and exhibition arts. This corresponds to only one segment of what Florida refers to as the “creative
classes.” In this paper, I use the word “creative(s)” not as a rigorous analytical category, but as the term actually
used by local policy-makers and place marketers in the policy and marketing discourses.
8 The process of pushing the visual and discursive “urban frontier” in Berlin’s place marketing imagery has not
only included temporary uses and interim spaces, but also sites of historical memory previously left out of the
city marketing discourse, as well as socially and ethnically mixed neighborhoods (such as Kreuzberg) and their
alternative and counter-cultural urban life (see Colomb, 2011, Chapter 8; and Novy & Huning, 2008).
9 In Berlin the process of marketing temporary uses as tourist attractions has certainly increased their popularity
and fuelled visitor numbers, although the initial success of particular sites predated official “creative city
policies” or media publicity. The influx of tourists to entertainment-oriented temporary uses, in particular
beach bars, has in some cases triggered a transformation of the activity at the expense of the small-scale,
experimental, informal, and non-commercial nature of early uses. Some of Berlin’s beach bars have become
highly commercial enterprises used by a rather high-income clientele.
10 This has sometimes happened with the support of the local state or of other local agencies. Berlin’s tourism
promotion organization BTM has, for example, started to call for specific measures to protect Berlin’s beach
bars and clubs, as these have become such an important tourist magnet in recent years.
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PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER: TEMPORARY

USES OF SPACE, CITY MARKETING, AND THE

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 34, Number 2, pages 131–152.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

THE “VOIDS OF BERLIN”: WASTELANDS AND “URBAN PIONEERS” IN THE

PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER IN THE “CREATIVE CITY”: THE MOBILIZATION

Pushing the Visual Urban Frontier: The Transformation of Place Marketing

in Amsterdam, Melbourne (Shaw, 2005) or Paris (Vivant, 2009). A combination of changing

TEMPORARY USERS OF URBAN SPACE IN THE AGE OF THE “CREATIVE CITY”:

SenStadt Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung. (2010). Baulückenmanagement. Available at http://www.

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